The subjects of religion and rational theology are integral to many of Kant's writings. Reflections on rational theology and the theological interpretation of nature were central to some of Kant's first important writings: the Universal Natural History and Nova dilucidatio (both 1755) and the Only Possible Ground of Proof for a Demonstration of God's Existence (1763). Rational theology and rational religious faith also figure prominently in all three Critiques: the Ideal of Pure Reason and Canon of Pure Reason in the first, the Dialectic of the second, and the Methodology of Teleological Judgment in the third. Although the writings translated in this volume do not therefore encompass the whole of his writings on religion and rational theology, they do contain the texts in which Kant dealt primarily with religion. They also document the history of one of the most critical and dramatic periods in Kant's professional life – the history of the process by which the philosopher came into collision with the Prussian authorities over the content of his teachings on religion.

Religious background

Kant received a strict religious upbringing from his parents, who were both devout pietists. Pietism was a seventeenth-century Christian revival movement that originated in Germany and was a powerful influence on German culture through the eighteenth century. It resembles in some ways other contemporary religious movements, such as the Quakers and Methodists in England or Chassidism among European Jews.